One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor.

I said two Wednesdays ago that I would put my next post up in a day or two. Well, that was a miserable failure. There's no excuse, other than the fact I'm a psychopath and when I have just that one thing to accomplish it spawns a Mordor-esque psychological barrier that takes weeks of hellish adventure, and the loss of some good friends to overcome. I guess I made it. Many things have occurred, so if you're a fan of moderate brevity, you're in luck. Let's go back two weekends ago to the night after I'd been hiking in Topanga.

I arrived home from Topanga in a good mood and was ready to succumb to another night of watching Netflix in the nude. Then a friend of Nick's called, who I had met the weekend before, and asked if I wanted to drink. I was of course, down. He gave me a lift, spotted me a bottle of wild turkey 101 and we went back to his apartment to drink with his girlfriend. Long story short, I tried taking a prescription painkiller, which when paired with a whole pint of bourbon, resulted in incessant and unchecked ranting arguments till dawn, followed by 13 hours of frighteningly refreshing hibernation sleep. I woke up at 7 the next night, briefly enraged at the people who I thought were being loud as shit before the sun had risen, and realized that it had already come and gone. Disconcerted by this information, I demanded a ride home and tried to cope with the horrific, unsettling disorientation. Well, no more painkillers for me. Early the next morning (Sunday) I had an interview at a Farmers Market stand and then planned to meet my cousin to drive down to a mini-family reunion, somewhere in the desert. I arrived back at my aunts and was worried I'd be up all night, considering my freshly fucked sleep schedule, but I passed back out around midnight and managed to rise again at 7.

I woke up Sunday morning in a daze and drove to a place called the Larchmount Farmers Market, right down the street from Paramount Studios, and met an acquaintance of my aunts to interview for a job. I didn't know much going in, but the short, fast talking, Italian man who I met and interviewed with was hiring for an Italian food company that made fresh pestos and pastas. I ended up helping run the stand all morning and even got to meet one of the guys from Kiss, who apparently is a regular there. Before I left, I was assured a job as a logistical manager, basically to help this company run their 18 farmers market stands and was told I'd be eased into the position. Hurrah, potential progress. I left around noon and drove to meet my flamboyantly gay cousin Mark, who lives right off Sunset Blvd, and who my Dad affectionately refers to as "Peach". My dad had one brother who was about 10 years older than him, and thus I have a bunch of much older cousins out in California who all have careers and such, one of whom is Mark. It was his siblings and their families that we would be spending the afternoon with. I hadn't seen him in a decade, except via Facebook, and met him outside his West Hollywood apartment that afternoon. I'm a big fan of Mark; he is rambunctiously outspoken, intelligent, straightforward and hilarious. We had a few minutes to spare and went into his apartment, where he immediately handed me a rice Krispy treat. It had M&M's and smelled like an Evergreen tree. A Canna-Krispy Treat. He warned me of it's potency and advised I only eat a little bit. I hadn't planned to get baked, especially since I'm naturally awkward enough around semi-random relatives, but said "Fuck it" and ate half. "It's gonna take a while to take affect," said Mark, "In the meantime, here's this," he said, handing me his bong. 'Good Mother of Jah', I thought to myself, as I indulged much more heavily than I knew I should have. So we smoked, watched football for a few minutes and then left to drive an hour south to meet my other cousins. Needless to say I was absolutely fried.

We arrived and I went through "The Extremely Stereotypical Series of Greetings With Moderately Unfamiliar Relatives Process". During which, I experienced the inevitable stoners conundrum; I knew that I'd be fine by simply embracing the buzz, but quickly became paranoid they knew I was high, which invariably made me overcompensate in my attempts at normalcy and ultimately turned me into a stuttering, nonsensical Helen Keller noise machine. Regardless, I managed to reasonably converse with the group of relatives throughout the afternoon and into the evening, putting all of my efforts into not completely losing my shit. I'm sure I seemed normal enough, but can't attest to how sane I actually appeared because my memory is tainted by the irrational logic of a high person. In my mind, everything I did and said seemed perfectly rational and reasonable. Although in hindsight, inhaling chips and salsa with every other breath of air I took, may have been a dead giveaway. Also, I ate the other half of the rice crispy treat midway through the visit, which prolonged my battle to continue conveying some moderate sanity. It ended up being a good time though, as we mostly watched football and ate a delicious spaghetti dinner. I just tried to keep my attention from drifting and my comments as minimally psychotic as possible. Around 8 that night Mark and I headed back LA, just as my thc buzz was finally beginning to fade.

That was two weeks ago and to be perfectly honest, nothing of particular interest has happened since then. Content with my improved employment situation, and generally feeling like less of a piece of shit, I procrastinated away a lot of my weekdays on Reddit and Netflix. After putting up my last post, like I said, I fought an uphill battle against my motivation, for no sensible reason, and have started, stopped, written, and rewritten this damn post about 25 times. Last weekend I worked again for my "training" day, but it only took about 5 minutes to learn the complex inner workings of a stand at a Farmers Market, and I quickly settled into the grind. I made jack shit in terms of money, but did get to leave with an armload of the leftover pasta and pesto, and a bunch of leftover baked goods from stand next us. The owner of the bakery stand was large, gay British man who told me he "could listen to my Southern accent all day long", kept giving me more bread and cakes, and offered me a temporary job. I would almost have been offended at the blatant objectification if it hadn't been so unexpected, absurd and side splittingly hilarious. Definitely worth my overall semi-discomfort from the interaction.

The past week I discovered my cousins longboard and spent the days riding down to the beach, exploring Venice and Santa Monica. Despite being generally alone, skating down to Venice Boardwalk and people watching as I rolled amidst the hordes of trinket peddlers, musclemen, junkies and tourists, will certainly be a fond and surreal memory. In the weeks ahead, as I continue to search for a car, fun, apartment and additional job, this cash flow ought to provide some new opportunities for excitement. With my and your slight entertainment as my semi high priority, I will indulge each opportunity with as much bourbon fueled decadence as I can mentally and physically muster.

Thizzin, Eagle's Rock, and Badasses of the Future

"I have accepted fear as part of life, specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says Turn Back..."

(For continuities sake, I included the last paragraph from the last post)

Rolling, I walked into the apartment as the unfamiliar effects began to take hold. My shoes felt foreign and uncomfortable, so I yanked them off. Unexpectedly, the bottoms of my feet felt incredible on the cold tiles. Icy jolts of pleasure shot from my heels up through my body until a violent shiver erupted from my shoulders. I stood curling my toes, over and over. Then I felt the heat. Directly across from the door was a small vent, emitting a stream of glorious, never-ending warmth. Entranced, I bounded over and slid down the wall onto the carpet, my back pressed against the erupting vent. I yelled for Bentley, a rambunctious little pup, who trotted over and jumped on my lap. He was soft, really soft. Heat permeated every inch of my back and oozed orgasmically throughout the rest of my body. It was a thermodynamic massage from God, and only the beginning...

As the four of us embraced a newfound love chemically coursing through our veins, Alicia, a friend's girlfriend, asked if I wanted a massage, which was bafflingly sensical at the time. Like butter in a microwave, my back melted away. After a few minutes, I turned entirely into a puddle, and we switched. The touch of my hands on her skin was electric, mesmerizing. For some reason, the fact that I could help make someone else so briefly happy filled me with near indescribable joy. We were all in ecstasy. Weird, warm love for these near strangers seeped uncontrollably from every pore in my body and I felt I couldn't express this fact enough. "Fucking California," I kept repeating, "God damn I love this place", as I chewed my gum with a fury. Then someone put on the Thizzle Dance. The mediocre beat had turned utterly hypnotic. Dancing along to it felt like the most natural thing I'd done in my life. After it ended I sat back down, curled my toes on the carpet and continued petting Bentley with a strange, infinite enthusiasm.

After a few hours, the bright new world faded away. We returned to a place of dim noises and dull lights. All of my innate loathing, which had dissipated with that vent's glorious heat, came rumbling back to life. "Fuck these people" I thought to myself. Ahh yes, normalcy had returned. I won't say outright what we took, which you ought to be able to surmise from what I've written, but I can say that there's no way to adequately write how great of a thing it was without also being conflicted about how much of a love gushing douchebag you sound like. It was what it was.

That was last weekend, and now its Wednesday the 23rd. I left Orange County last Monday, my new perspective in tow and headed back to my Aunt's house in Venice. I was motivated, intending to spend last week making some crucial Life progress. But ultimately I let the days wither away. After my last post, I wrote nothing and spent my time rocking back and forth, sucking my thumb, and fretting over a mild case of existential anxiety. It's almost funny how absurd laziness is, and how acting like a piece of garbage just builds on itself. Why and how the fuck did I spend so much time watching the same seasons of Arrested Development I'd already seen 10 times before? Or simply nonstop flipping through the Netflix menus, which provided me with a bizarre and inexplicable sense of comfort?

After a few days this irrational, anxiety induced inaction and after I finished another bout of quiet, masturbatory weeping, I wiped away my tears and got the fuck out of bed. It was Thursday evening and I texted Heather, the pale blue eyed friend of Esme's, asking advice on potential good hikes in the area. She invited me to go with her and a friend hers, Sahara, for a hike behind her house in Topanga the next day. So I woke Friday morning, climbed in Esme's conveniently unused Honda Civic, and headed North up "the 10" towards the Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon. I arrived as they were finishing breakfast and chatted with Heather's awesomely Australian mom, while they got ready. Traversing up a narrow trail behind Heather's house, we made our way up the canyon to a point called Eagles Rock and had ridiculous views of the desert mountains, canyons, Pacific Ocean and of Catalina Island, just visible off the coast. The simple, few hours of hiking proved invaluable to my mental state and I drove back to LA refreshed and ready again to begin the existence of a productive human being.

Despite my shitty timing and lack of consistent blog writing, I'm going to write about the rest of the weekend in a separate post, which will be up tomorrow evening or Friday morning. It was fucking absurd and will be worth the excessive detail I plan on describing it in. I am quite aware this post should have been up days ago, but like I said before, I still battle with these unwanted doses of the Fear. At this age we're all at a point where the long term oriented and fucking irritating Pressure, will simply overpower and shit upon anything you have any passion for. There has been an obvious, illuminated path laid out for most of us, which was the unquestionable, never ending and hellish schooling we endure from the ages of 5 till 20 something... But what now? For the first time in our lives no one knows what the hell is going to happen, and it's a massive bitch of an inobvious hassle to figure it out. One mustn't forget though, me especially, that the struggle, the lack of money, the loneliness, the distance from home, and the Great Unknown are the things that make this whole fucking experience worth it. Fighting through the hard parts of each of our respective endeavors, however neverendingly shitty or horrifying they may appear, are what turn us into the Badasses of the Future. One of the best and most comforting quotes I constantly remind myself of, and believe to be true - "You are exactly where you're supposed to be".

The Impasse

"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." 

 - Hunter Thompson 

On this trip, the bar for absurdity was set high from the get go, but the events that transpired over the last three weeks have exceeded Murphy and my's most maniacal expectations. Considering the endeavor's whimsical nature, the unexpected was welcome, beckoned even. Lured as prey and graciously devoured. But where does it take me now? Do the gods expect a fall from grace? Should this beautiful, momentous wave crash in California, drain painfully into the Pacific and suck my newfound metaphysical Glory into the bowels of the perpetually numb? Fuck That. I'm staying on board, riding this westward blowing whim and continuously billowing the sails of my life with unimaginable hilarity and fortuitous adventure. Pushing through these bizarre trials and tribulations has reoriented my Goal from a mere change in circumstance into a complete evolution of Expectation. So the story takes a twist. Will it unfold as a unique tale of invaluable experience and personal growth, or a painful and inevitable demise sparked by my unrealistic stupidity? All I know is I've read Into The Wild and plan to avoid Alaska at all costs.

And so here I am, in the City of Angels and at an impasse. Searching for a job, a home, but ever cognizant of falling too far into the mundane. Excited and mentally prepared to face this unfamiliar West, yet aware of the forming those mechanized habits that tend to draw me, and everyone, everywhere, into an understood life of comfortable expectation. On this note, and since I so far managed to avoid having to dole out too many 75¢ Men's room hand jobs, or having to sleep under the stars with the syringe toting bums of Venice, I'm going to take being mature and realistic about life with about as much apathy as I can muster. In doing so, I plan to take advantage of all and any opportunities which allow me to alter my perception of either the world around me, or the one inside my head. What's the worst that could happen?

Last week, we found some mushrooms. Not in the wild, but from a friend. And these weren't typical mushrooms, they were those deliciously poisonous ones. The kind that in moderation made a glorious ball of warm happiness emanate from your stomach and trickle elation like sands from an hourglass into your skull. And in excess, they took you on a colorful, crazy journey into the awesome, Unknown depths of your mind. We planned to take them and go for a hike that afternoon behind Jack Black's house, where a friend was apparently the production assistant for a porno and had found some good trails (I wish I could make this shit up). It was the perfect recipe to brew up some Weird. But the friend fell through, and we opted to enjoy our treats on the Venice Boardwalk. I ate mine with a bagel crusted pizza, a mind blowing experience in itself and we walked to the boardwalk. Sauntering up towards the famous glowing pier, we waded through a crowd of freaks, tourists, bums, punks, artists, cons, skaters and Venice loons. The feeling was subtle but added a nice bizarre element to the already surreal conglomeration eccentric folk. Californian mountains down the coast were just visible through the L.A. haze and were epically silhouetted, as the sun dipped toward the Pacific.

We diverted onto the beach and sat in a lifeguard stand as sun continued to fall. The dusk induced array of colors and patterns were heightened as we sat without a word, watching the waves roll and crash, unspoken giddiness flowing throughout our bodies. It disappeared all too quickly, our senses began to dull, and we continued on to the pier. Enjoying ourselves but well in control, we climbed barefoot onto a mist breathing, 15 foot tall, concrete dragon head and relaxed, basking in the slivers of strangeness that remained. I watched a fidgety, black homeless man, garbed in a filthy, hole ridden suit, speaking in tongues and hilariously fucking with the most naive tourists. He'd lure them in with quiet rambling and a pathetic stature, seemingly asking for change, only to erupt into a screaming, nonsensical rant of gibberish as soon as they approached. It happened the same each time, they'd grab their children and run, and he'd do it over and over. For some time I watched him, as I sat upon the dragons head, and immensely enjoyed his display of incessant, side splitting lunacy. Especially at the expense of the fanny pack brigade. After an hour, we climbed off of the dragon and walked to a famous LA diner, where apparently the "pregnancy reveal" scene from Knocked Up was filmed. It was a good day.

Then the weekend came around. I woke up Saturday morning, showered and remembering I knew no one and had nothing to do, prepared for a few days of the soul crushing job search. Just as this depressing thought took hold, Nick called. He was on his way to L.A. to pick me up. Change of plans, I was going to Orange County. Unbeknownst to me, another weekend of depravity lie in wait.

Rolling, I walked into the apartment as the unfamiliar effects began to take hold. My shoes felt foreign and uncomfortable, so I yanked them off. Unexpectedly, the bottoms of my feet felt incredible on the cold tiles. Icy jolts of pleasure shot from my heels up through my body until a violent shiver erupted from my shoulders. I stood curling my toes, over and over. Then I felt the heat. Directly across from the door was a small vent, emitting a stream of glorious, never-ending warmth. Entranced, I bounded over and slid down the wall onto the carpet, my back pressed against the erupting vent. I yelled for Bentley, who trotted over and jumped on my lap. He was soft, really soft. Heat permeated every inch of my back and oozed orgasmically throughout the rest of my body. It was a thermodynamic massage from God, and only the beginning.

To Be Continued...